What is it?

Appearances have become paramount in todays uber stylish world. Or may be it always was this way. Look around, there are hardly men sans pumped up biceps, wash board abs or women, not flashing perfectly coiffered hair, manicured nails, dressed to perfection.

While I do admire people who take the pain to look perfect or maybe they were born with looks and went with the flow. No big deal! However, I must say it's quite commodius, experiencing divine comfort in flip flops, sneakers, jeans & baggy t shirts that do wonders,hiding the curves(over the years the curves have aquired softer contours and some of the curves even have a cute and mushy nomenclature - love handles!).

The male and female roles have become more defined, these days. It begins right in the childhood, blue identifying boyish stuff while everything pink is demure, docile and girlish and it continues into adulthood. People like me (no I dont feel like being trapped in the wrong body, happy to be a woman), for whom colour or style doesnt matter, it's all about comfort, are met with weird looks and boy, does it want me to change? No.

Let's consider a person with the following characteristics:

Clothing - Jeans t-shirt sneakers
Gait - horse like
Interests - hayabusa, rugby, baseball
Culinary skill - some incidents of people puking, once the food descended their food pipe(could be they all had faulty digestive systems)!
Mannerisms - anything but coy.

Doesn't sound like the epitome of womanhood? No, but she is a woman just the way she is, juggling life, with brain power (& some manpower, lacking the finesse of manicured hands).

Reminds me of Lord Byron's poem:

SHE walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies,
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meets in her aspect and her eyes;

So, what is it that SUVs personify - strength and security. OK ok Mercedes is all about style and class but...go figure.

Life!

The word life has a different meaning for everyone.

For me life means the moment I am in currently & I would like to live it to the hilt. Hilt in this case is family, friends and hullaballoo.
Without the above three, I go into a nirvana mode, delving into the nature of reality, examining the nature of reality, including the relationship between mind and matter, substance and attribute, fact and value :-)

Ofcourse it is fun to travel the road less treaded, it is wise to enrich life with experiences but not without family, friends & hullaballoo!

Even paradise sans family & friends is as good as zilch.Which boils down to live life king size.

Senses..

If you close your eyes and think about a smell that means a lot to you...what comes to your mind?
Whatever it is, there must be a special reason why one smell comes alive so vividly. For me it is the smell of "shiuli" flowers or night flowering Jasmine. The smell is so fresh in my memory..the month of October meant Durga puja & the jasmine flowers, in the garden, like stars on the ground, were a harbinger of festivities.

The smell of rain drops on sun parched earth...so earthy!

Certain smells linger in my mind because they meant so much to me and I still yearn for them.

The smell of "khichudi" with dollops of ghee on a rainy day WOW!It is special not beacuse of the food itself but because it was a family time, relishing "khichudi" with my parents & sister.
For that matter, I could tell the clinking of my Mom's bangles, even if she was not within sight.
The smell of my dad's aftershave... I could go on & on....

Battle of the bulge

I am horizontally challenged. Period.

All the body shapes -apple ,pear, cone, hour glass(ofcourse not) do not apply to me. I am stretched in both directions from cheeks to calf. But the irony is I have been on a diet since I have had a memory. No I am exagerating but you can assume I have been on a diet since a long long time. You name it I have done it - cabbage soup diet, GM diet, No carb diet, low sodium diet, high protein diet, potato only diet.

What then goes wrong? Some loose weight to get healthier, some to look thin, some to get into their old pair of jeans but I try to shed the kilos to go on a binge and in the process gain the lost weight! When all else failed, I brazen facedly flaunted what I had - strutting my spare tyre. I concluded, from the looks around, I didn't have a figure to die for.

In order to justify my weight I have devised some brilliant excuses - I am a mom(moms are allowed the luxury of a paunch), slow metabolism(deteriorates with age), cold country ( have you noticed butter melting in hot conditions but turning rock solid in the freezer), busy life and no time to exercise and ofcourse genes!!!

I know I need more than prayers to shrink my size. Beleive me, I am trying but the post dinner desert glues itself to my waist, for no fault of mine :D

The true meaning

Ever wondered why people talk just for the sake of talking? I have and am still wondering.
Like when someone asks "does your daughter go to a school?", I barely stop myself from retorting "No I have forced her into child labour". When aqcuaintences who havent bothered to call on you, mistakenly bump into you, suddenly very concerned, accuse you of hibernating "where have you been","well, to London to visit the queen". It's funny and you need to brush off (in your mind!)any verdict passed about you being callous.

I am (ONLY)socially, too good to mouth my inner feelings so all I do is acquiesce and marvel at the foolhardiness with which some people leave you speechless with their act(literally)!

Homeless

Yes, that's what I feel now. I do have a roof over my head but it's the inner quest to feel at home in a place away from home. There were days when I missed India so much, I was going about day to day life with discontent and yearning to get back home, to belong, to conform....
I had two choices- to crib, harp, feel miserable or adapt. I chose the second option, a truce with the turmoil within, or so I thought.
I took a trip back home, only to realise I was still not at home, in my own home. I had changed, everything else was, as it was. I was lost and felt homeless. I did enjoy my moments back home but things which had never bothered me earlier, came to surface and I didn't dare to get vocal for fear of being called snobbish.

I am more at peace today, to the point of being stoic. Memories of "good old days" are ensconced deep within, like having loved and lost. It was another time , another world still very vividly alive within me but I do not delve into it. I am living my dream of dwelling abroad..and wishing I had never dreamt so.

Princess of the palace

As a kid I remember playing a game wherein we had to sing princess of the palace lost her shoe. It never made an impact on my mind, never thought of myself as a princess of any sort. But these days when I see the commodification of princesses or rather the disney princesses, I am concerened about the ramifications, being a mother of a girl.
My four year old girl is swallowed into the princess world, hook, line and sinker. In these times when we talk about women shouldering equal responsibilities as men in every aspect of life, how can I let my daughter grow up believing life is but a fairy tale, all she has to ever do is dress up & wait for some handsome prince charming! All my attempts to infuse some sanity into the pristine mind of hers' is in vain. She is under the impression that once she grows up , some prince will woo her off her feet & they can live happily ever after. We have had to shelve away her jeans and trousers and anything remotely bearing a masculine hint. The predominant colour is pink and bed linnen to glass everything has a princess imprint. Thanks to the hoopla surrounding disney princesses,my tiny tot believes muscles are for men and she is conscious about her look, hair style et al at this tender age.
I wish the Swedish fictional character Pippi Longstocking was a role model to young girls. Pippi is assertive, brave and can lift a horse with one hand! I feel, she is someone young girls should emulate and not the princesses clad in beautiful clothes and rendered useless otherwise. In a way this sows the seed in the mind of a young girl that girls are meant to be pretty, kissed, danced with and married off, which is so contradictory to today's woman.
I sincerely hope this is just a passing phase and my girl will come out of it unscathed, believing there's more to life than mere looks and princes.